WASHINGTON  Back in the summer of 1976, when the economy was in worse shape than today and the president's image was as nondescript as a Ford sedan, a White House political adviser wrote a memo titled, "Cows Soil the President's Suit: The Problems of Campaigning on the Road."

The president was Gerald R. Ford, a decent, competent man who would fall four months later to the smiling Georgian, Jimmy Carter.

Ford was dealt one of the bleakest hands of any U.S. president. He came to office by appointment, a replacement for the disgraced Richard Nixon. The economy had been hit by a rare confluence of inflation and recession. Like today, many Americans were worried about the direction of the country, and it was showing in Ford's lagging polls.

But the memo was not devoted to the economy. It was about Ford's image, which had been battered by a series of physical gaffes and campaign foul-ups. It got so bad that comedian Chevy Chase became famous by parodying a stumbling Ford on the then-fledgling "Saturday Night Live" television show. This was ironic because Ford, a former center on undefeated Michigan football teams, was one of our most athletic presidents.

But as they say in politics, image is everything. And "Cows Soil the President's Suit" is a classic case of how leadership is perceived in America.

The memo listed 21 campaign mess-ups, including some where Ford had either stumbled, bumped his head, or — as the title suggests — gotten too close to a messy cow. Some of the gaffes were out of Ford's hands, such as one aide's assertion to the media that the president planned to be presidential in the coming week.

"It must be kept in mind that the response of the viewer is not to the man but to the image," said the memo, written by then-Ford adviser Dorrance Smith. "Therefore, it becomes an absolute necessity that some one person or group maintain a constant vigil over the image and over the response. We have control over the candidate; we have partial control over the media. We have used neither of these elements of control to our advantage."

As a result of these bumbling images and a lack of clear policy statements, Smith went on, the image of Ford was "fuzzy," the power of incumbency "squandered."

This 28-year-old memo is relevant today for two reasons.

First, after the death of the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, it reinforces the importance of message discipline and clarity in shaping the president's image. Reagan took hits for his policies, but even his foes give him great credit for a clear, optimistic outlook.

Second, the Ford memo shows why both the campaigns of President George W. Bush and his 2004 Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry, have suddenly begun arguing over who is the bigger optimist.

Bush is doing so to deflect attention from continuing problems in the transfer of power in Iraq and to strengthen his better-times-are-ahead plea for a second term.

With news of economic recovery and job growth piling up, Bush is making the cup-half-full argument and hitting Kerry for focusing on the empty half.